Pubdate: Mon, 13 Feb 2006
Source: Eagle-Tribune, The (MA)
Copyright: 2006 The Eagle-Tribune
Contact:  http://www.eagletribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/129
Author: Stephanie  Akin
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Test)

SOME HAVERHILL PARENTS SUGGEST DRUG TESTS FOR TEACHERS

HAVERHILL - Prison guards, school bus drivers and airline pilots are 
required to undergo drug tests as a condition of employment. So why 
not  teachers? That's the question some local parents are asking 
following the arrest recently of a teacher's aide at Bradford 
Elementary School for illegal  possession of marijuana and prescription drugs.

"With a lot of employers, people expect there will be a drug test 
before they are even hired," said Sandy Farmer, a member of the 
Bradford Elementary School  Parent Teacher Organization.

"You're taking someone's child into your care; there should be some 
type of program put in place," said Jennifer Morgan, president of the 
Bradford PTO. In Massachusetts, The Education Reform Act of 1993 
requires school districts to do criminal background checks on all employees.

A drug test, some parents and school officials said, is a natural 
next step, especially considering that criminal background checks 
confirm only if a prospective employee has been arrested, and only if 
the arrest was in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts anti-discrimination laws prohibit employers, including 
school districts, from asking applicants if they are drug users. 
Naomi Shonberg, an attorney who represents 25 school districts, 
including Haverhill, Lawrence and Andover, said districts can 
institute drug tests for job applicants without asking teacher's 
unions. Random and suspicion-based tests are  legal but subject to 
collective bargaining.

The American Civil Liberties Union has challenged employee drug tests 
as an invasion of employee privacy, equating them with random 
searches outlawed by the  Fourth Amendment. They said drug tests can 
return false positives or reveal  information that an employer has no 
right to know, such as if an employee or  applicant is pregnant or 
taking antidepressants. But federal law requires drug tests for all 
transportation workers; the state tests workers in its prisons, and 
several cities and towns test police and firefighters.

The Massachusetts Department of Education does not keep track of 
which school districts test employees for drugs. Representatives from 
school districts in Andover, North Andover and Methuen said their 
districts like Haverhill do not  require any kind of drug tests. 
Lawrence school officials did not return requests for comment.

In Haverhill, parents and school officials agreed that Bradford 
Elementary School administrators handled Jillian Reynolds, 20, as 
well as the district's policy allows. Reynolds' supervisors noticed 
her frequent trips to the bathroom  and what they described as 
"impaired" behavior when she returned. Finally, they asked her to 
empty her bag. When they found the marijuana cigarette, illegal 
muscle relaxer and anti-anxiety medication, they called the police. 
She was fired the same day.

Reynolds, a 2003 Haverhill High School graduate, told a co-worker she 
was a former heroin addict, according to police reports.

Phil Kimball, whose daughter Kara, 17, is the Haverhill High student 
president, said he would be against random testing, but teachers 
should be  tested if the district had a cause for concern.

Others said teachers have such constant contact with their 
administrators, and schools can easily identify teachers who have 
problems and confront them by other means, just as they did with Reynolds.

"If they thought something wasn't right, they'd be on top of it," 
said Maureen Zuber, who has four children in Haverhill schools and 
whose husband,  Phil Zuber, teaches fifth grade at Silver Hill 
Elementary School. School Committee President Robert Gilman said 
Richard Langlois, head of the school district personnel department, 
told him the district has had fewer than three incidents of drug 
abuse in the past 12 years. Over that time, it has employed 1,400 
people and 4,600 volunteers, he said. "It didn't seem to be an 
overwhelming problem," he said. North Andover Superintendent Harry 
Harutunian said his former district in Reading tested all applicants 
as part of a $200 physical. In North Andover, he said, he couldn't 
justify such an expense.

"If I had the ability to do it, I'd do it," he said. A spokesman for 
the state said he could not immediately provide costs for 
state-mandated employee drug tests. But Todd Shoulberg, vice 
president of Florida Drug Screening, a national company with sample 
drop-off sites in  Methuen, Lawrence and Andover, said a school 
district could start a  comprehensive program, which would include 
screening roughly 100 job applicants  and about 10 employees every 
month, for less than $5,000 a year. Shoulberg said  his company 
conducts tests for school districts in other parts of the 
country  but not in Massachusetts.

In Westford, an upper-middle-class town of 20,000 people 30 miles 
west of Haverhill, teacher drug use became a concern with the arrest 
last month of a teacher for possession of heroin. That teacher was 
the second arrested on such the charges in the town in five years.

"People are embracing the idea that we are going to pursue this," 
Betsey Andrews, chairwoman of the Westford School Committee, said of 
drug tests. "It's their children that are dealing with these teachers 
every single day." Westford does not test its students for drugs, 
Andrews said. But the School Committee is considering required 
physicals and drug tests for all new hires, a  policy the district 
will then broaden to include random tests for all school  employees.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman